DOCTRINAL
PAMPHLET
SERIES

THE TRINITY

by

Rev. Gerard S. Sloyan
(With Study-Club Questions )

PAUUST PRESS
(Paulist Fathers)
Glen Rock, N.J.

The Author

Rev. Gerard S. Sloyan is head of the Department of
Religious Education at Catholic University of America,
Washington, D.C., and president of the Liturgical Con-
ference.

Nihil Obstat: Donald A. Panella, M.A., S.T.L., S.S.L.,

Censor Deputatus

Imprimatur: * Francis Cardinal Spellman
Archbishop of New York

February 13, 1963

The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are oflGicial dec-
larations that a book or pamphlet is free of doc-
trinal or moral error. No implication is contained
therein that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat
and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions
or statements expressed.

Copyright © 1963 by
The Missionary Society
of St. Paul the Apostle
in the State of New York.

Published by the Paulist Press

Editorial Office: 304 W. 58th St., New York, NY. 10019
Business Office: Glen Rock, New Jersey 07452

Manufactured in the
United States of America.

24

Introduction

Since 1759 it has been specified that in the Roman rite the
praefatio or prayer of the Mass which begins the eucharistic ac-
tion proper should be that of the Holy Trinity on all Sundays of
the year. (In practice, this is not always the case.) This hymn
in praise of the mystery of God's being dates from the early
Middle Ages. It is clear and unequivocal on the interrelation of
the three persons in God, at least insofar as their mutual and
perfect possession of godhead {i.e., divine nature) is concerned.
The Lord who is holy Father, all-powerful and eternal God, is
fittingly and justly praised, says the opening phrase of the prayer.
We address ourselves to the Father telling Him that everywhere
and always we offer a eucharist to Him,

who in company with your only Son and Holy Spirit are one
God, one Lord, not in the uniqueness of a single person but in
a Trinity of one substance. For what we believe concerning
Your glory, as you have revealed it to us, this we hold of Your
Son and this too of the Holy Spirit, without any discriminatory
difference. Our prayer of acknowledgment and praise (confessio)
of the true and everlasting godhead is this : that the common pos-
session by the persons, the unity in essence, and the equality
of majesty, may ever be adored. This the angels praise and the
archangels, cherubim and seraphim . . .

And so on, into the ceaseless chorus of praise that declares
the Trinity of persons in one substance to be thrice holy: ''Sanctus,
Sanctus, Sanctus.'' It is all very orderly, almost like a sum in
arithmetic or a puzzle in logic, the truth of which does not at first
strike the eye, but which is there all the same. It all bears very

3

little relation to the way we came to know this mystery of God's
inner life, which is at the same time the mystery of Christ. As the
preface of the Most Holy Trinity describes the mystery of divin-
ity, it is more a "truth to be believed" than an invitation to a
new life.

How did it come about that the opening of the chief prayer
(the canon) of the Western liturgies, prescribed for Sunday after
Sunday, should speak of the central mystery of Christian faith in
such philosophical and non-Biblical terms? An allied question is,
why do patterns of catechetical instruction similar in spirit to the
preface of the Trinity almost insure in youthful and adult Chris-
tians the absence of any active awareness of their call to a share
in trinitarian existence, a life lived in close union with the divine
Three? The formula of self-dedication of Christians in the sign
of the cross to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a commonplace in
their lives. Yet it is only seldom that they think of themselves
as deeply and intimately related to each of the Persons whom they
name. Why should this be?

The spirit of the medieval preface quoted above is found as
early as the fifth-century Athanasian Creed, sometimes known by
its first word Quicumque (the composition of Bishop Niceta of
Remesiana, or perhaps Saint Ambrose of Milan) :

Now, Catholic faith in this, that we worship one God in trinity
and trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing
the substance. There is one person who is the Father, another
who is the Son, and still another who is the Holy Spirit, but the
godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is
one; the glory is equal; the majesty is co-eternal.

Each person is then described in turn as uncreated, each as alK
powerful, each as God. The Father is neither made, created, nor
l)egotten; the Son is neither made nor created, but is begotten of
the Father; the Holy Spirit is neither made, created, nor begotten,
but proceeds from the Father and the Son. In all matters concern-
ing the Three, unity is to be worshiped in trinity and trinity in
unity.

4

This is indeed a far cry from the prayer with which Paul
opens his letter to his converts in Ephesus:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
has blessed us with every spiritual, heavenly blessing in Christ
. . . out of love having predestined us to be His adoptive sons
through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will,
to the praise of the glorious manifestation of His grace . . . We
have been predestined to contribute to the praise of His glory —
we who before hoped in Christ. In Him you too, when you had
heard the word of truth, the good news of your salvation, and
believed in it, were marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit, who
is the pledge of our inheritance ... to the praise of His [i.e.,
God's] glory (Eph. 1, 3-14).

There was a deed of God with respect to us: the sending of
His Son out of eternal love. We are to go back to the Father
with the Son, there to praise forever His choice of us. Our desig-
nation or sealing by the Spirit will accomplish this. We know God
for what He is in what He does for us. The God who is we love
not because He is one in substance although three in persons, but
because He acts out of love for us. It is in His action that we
know Him. It is a matter of idle speculation whether we might
have come to know Him intimately in any other way.

What, then, accounts for the stiff and precise language of the
Athanasian Creed and the preface of the Holy Trinity? The
wording of most catechisms, we have said, is in that same spirit.
How is it that we seem to have lost something precious in our rela-
tion to the God who saves us, in our very attempts to describe who
He is who saves us? Can we, perhaps, be just as clear in our word-
ing of the incomprehensible mystery without running the risk of
failing to become a part of the mystery as God intended? It would
seem so, or else divine love is an even stranger paradox that we
have been led to believe.

But first we must see what happened when God acted to save
us. Otherwise we shall never know who He is.

5

The Saving Deed

In times past God spoke to our fathers in many ways and by many
means, through the prophets; now at last in these times he has
spoken to us with a Son to speak for him; a Son, whom he has
appointed to inherit all things, just as it was through him that
he created this world of time; a Son who is the radiance of his
Father's splendor, and the full expression of his being; all crea-
tion depends, for its support, on his enabling word. Now, making
atonement for our sins, he has taken his place on high, at the
right hand of God's majesty . . .

(Heb. 1, 1-3)

The Son is the starting point of our full knowledge of God.
"In the beginning was the Word," Saint John's Gospel (1, 1) says.
There had been words spoken to men in the past — many of them,
and variously phrased. God's final and complete utterance, how-
ever, is His enfleshed Word, His Son. Christ is the perfect image
of the Father's splendor (in Hebrew kahhod, which is simply an
attempt to speak of the mystery of deity) ; He is the fully adequate
manifestation of all that is in God. Knowledge of God through
this radiant Son came only when the times were fulfilled (Gal.
4, 4), when the final age had come upon the world (1 Cor. 10,
11) and the reign of God was at hand (Mark 1, 15).

This age was marked by a new idea. The idea was not new in
the sense that it was unprepared for. Nothing in the final age
{Le., the present age) was unprepared for. The very essence of
God's word spoken to the fathers in times past was that it readied
hearts for the age of fulfillment. The new idea was that the God
who is love (1 John 4, 8) so loved the world that He gave His
only-begotten Son. This was done that those who came to believe
in Him might have life everlasting (John 3, 16). Besides being
loving with respect to us men, God is love in Himself. His whole
inner life is love, and it is into this love that we are invited to
come. It is this love He asks us to share in.

The ancient problem concerning God was that He was a deity
whom no one had ever seen. Moses taught of Him when He trans-
mitted the Torah — that loving Instruction which came to be un-
derstood as Law. The fullness of grace and truth, God's unmeas-

6

ured self-giving and His absolute fidelity, came only in the person
of Jesus Christ who is "in the bosom of the Father: he has revealed
him" (John 1, 18). The problem posed by the Incarnation, if we
may so express it, was how this fullness of grace and truth made
manifest in Christ could befcome the personal possession of each
of us.

Jesus began by revealing His Father slowly. The first stage of
His revelation was little more than the reminder of a forgotten
truth. He recalled to the minds of His Israelite brothers that in
their God they had a Father. The Book of Malachia, the last bit
of inspired prophecy to have been written, three or four centuries
before, stressed God's fatherhood of the men of the by then de-
funct kingdoms of Israel and Juda alike (Mai. 2, 10) ; Hosea had
underscored the Father's tender care of "Israel . . . my son" (11,
1 ) . Now Jesus stresses all that it means to be children of a Father
in heaven who evenhandedly sends rain upon the just and the
unjust (Matt. 5, 45), who will reward no one who does good so
as to be seen by men (Matt. 6, 1), who knows our needs even be-
fore we ask Him (Matt. 6, 8).

The God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ

This loving Fatherhood of men is not to be confused, however,
with the unique relation in which God stands to the Son. "All
things have been delivered to me by my Father," Jesus claims,
"and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the
Father is except the Son and him to whom the Son chooses to
reveal him" (Luke 10, 21f.).

This is the great relation of Jesus' life. It transcends any rela-
tion of blood or intimate friendship: "See, here are my mother
and my brothers. Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven,
he is my brother and sister and mother" (Matt. 12, 50). As early
as St. Luke's account of the boy Jesus in the Temple, the clear dis-
tinction is found on Jesus' lips between Joseph and the God who
begot Him: "'Son ... in sorrow your father and I have been
seeking you.' And he said to them, 'How is it that you sought me.
Did you not know^ that I must be about my Father's business?' "
(Luke 2, 48f.) Jesus teaches men to address their heavenly Father

7

as "Our Father" (Matt. 6, 9), but at no time does He identify His
sonship of God with theirs. In fact, He is at pains to distinguish
between the two types.

To Mary Magdalene in the garden He gives the message for
His brothers, "I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God
and your God" (John 20, 17). That is not merely emphatic
speech. It is a clear distinction that is preserved throughout the
gospels. Jesus earlier had asked why He whom the Father had
"made holy and sent into the world" had to be reckoned blas-
phemous for saying, "I am the Son of God" (John 11, 34-36), if
the psalmist (81 [82] 6) could call the judges who represented
God, "gods." Because Jesus worked the works of God, He said,
there was reason to believe "that the Father is in me and I am in
the Father" (John 10, 38).

The claim to be God's Son in a special way was the blasphemy
for which Jesus was convicted, ultimately. Once in His public
life He was stoned for making Himself out divine (cf. John 10,
33). Many had claimed to be Israel's Messia (in Greek, "Chris-
tos^'). This was not deemed a blasphemous claim, only a re-
grettable assertion when it proved to be untrue. At His trial,
'They all said, 'Are you then the Son of God?' " (Luke 23, 70).
When He answered by pointing out that they had said as much,
they declared the case at an end: He was self -condemned. In
Mark's gospel the query is given as: "Are you the Son of the
Blessed One?" (Mark 14, 61). Upon His failure to utter a denial.
He was held guilty of blasphemy.

Even while Jesus was stressing the uniqueness of His relation
to His Father, He was making clear that He was a Son who had
come to serve God's other sons, men whom He counted as His
"friends" (Luke 12, 4; John 15, 15). The bond of friendship was
sealed on His part by His disclosing to them "everything that I
have heard from my Father," and ultimately by His laying down
His life for them, and on their part by their doing as He asked.

The title "son of God" was not used for the first time by Jesus,
it should be observed; Jewish writings composed between the two
testaments of Scripture, including a scroll from the Dead Sea,
contain it as a designation of one especially favored by God-

8

Jesus permits, indeed encourages, the attribution of the title to
Himself with unique force. He views Himself as God's Son by
nature, one who does not merely come from the creative Hand but
who is begotten by God as a son is begotten by a father. While
He insists that God is a Father to Him as He is to no one else (cf.
John 14, 7-14; 15, 9. 22-24; 16, 28), the only reason He, Jesus,
has come is to give "the power of becoming sons of God to as
many as received Him" (John 1, 12). This is a gift He has from
the Father, which He wishes to share: everlasting life or sonship.
We shall see that He is empowered to do this through being
glorified by His Father in His manhood. He becomes, in St.
Paul's language, "life-giving spirit." His resurrection, ascension
and enthronement, in other words, give Him a new title to son-
ship; it is through this sonship of divinized manhood that He
shares with us something of His eternal sonship of the Father.

In the New Testament the latter terms are interchangeable.
Jesus prays in His last hours for all those whom the Father has
given Him, "that they may know You, the only true God, and Him
whom You have sent" (John 17, 3). This knowledge men have
that Jesus has come forth from the Father will bring the possibility
of a share in the "glory" that He is about to receive at the Father's
hand. He describes this gift to men as His own joy, shared by
them to the full (cf. John 17, 13). It is a "consecration by the
truth" (v. 17).

All these phrases help us to se^ that although the relation be-
tween Father and Son is an eternal reality within the life of
God, it is a thing that is disclosed to us so that it may be something
to us. It is not a truth to be assented to in the Greek intellectual
sense so much as truth to be "known" in the Hebrew sense, that is
"lived," "experienced." This helps to explain Jesus' bold phrasing
when He prays, "May they all be one; as You, Father, are in Me
and I in You, so also may they be one in us, that the world may
believe that You sent me" (John 17, 21).

His Sonship of His Father, in other words, is an eternal reality
that is revealed precisely in order that it may be extended. This
cannot happen, however, until He has returned to the Source of
all who sent Him on His mission. Jesus' phrase for this principle

9

of origination is, "the Father is greater than I" (John 14, 28).
He is in the Father and the Father is in Him (John 14, 10), yet
His return to the Father is somehow a condition of His coming
back to His friends from this "greater" than He (John 10, 28).
The life of grace, as it is later to be called, is a matter of being
sons in the only Son. It is real union with the Father and Son.
As we shall see later in these pages, it is more properly union
with the divine Three.

The Spirit of God; Spirit of Christ

The Holy Spirit does not stand out in the gospels nearly so
sharply as do the Father and Son in their mutual relation. Time
and again "the Spirit" or "the Holy Spirit" is referred to, but in
such a way that the pious Israelite could understand the term
simply as the Lord Himself in His mighty power. To the Spirit
are attributed the virginal conception of Jesus (Matt. 1, 18; Luke
1, 35), the outcry of Elizabeth in praise of Mary (Luke 1, 41),
the joyous utterances of Zachary (1, 67) and Simeon (2, 25).
Similarly, when Jesus goes into the desert to be tempted He is
"led by the Spirit" (Matt. 4, 1). Even the references to the Spirit
in the baptismal narratives are somewhat of this indeterminate,
Old Testament character (cf. Matt. 3, 16; Luke 3, 22; John 1,
32), though a clear distinction is made between the Father's voice
and the Spirit-dove.

In the fourth gospel the term "spirit" is used to describe all
that is of God or from above as opposed to what is basically of
the earth and of man ("flesh") untouched by spirit (cf. John 3, 5;
4, 24; 6, 64). The fourth gospel gives the clearest hint of how
there is to be an activity of the Spirit in the life of the Church
distinct from the power of God Most High exhibited in Jesus'
lifetime. Our Lord's description of rivers of living water flowing
from Himself and from one who is in Him is identified by John
as a reference to "the Spirit whom they who believed in Him
[Jesus] were to receive; for the Spirit had not yet been given,
since Jesus had not yet been glorified" (John 7, 38). The refer-
ence here is obviously to that full outpouring of the Spirit that
would follow the Son's glorious return to the Father.

10

A saying of Jesus refers to the help the Holy Spirit will provide
to disciples in their speech when they are summoned before syna-
gogues, governors and kings (cf. Mark 13, 11). So holy is He
that "every kind of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven to men;
but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven" (Matt.
12, 31). This raises the question of who this "Spirit of God"
may be if He is not God Himself nor "the Son of Man" — the two
other possibilities ruled out by the context.

It is only at the Last Supper that the person of the Holy Spirit
and His work become fully explicit. There Jesus speaks at length
of "another Advocate" (He being the first), whom the Father
will send to remain permanently with His friends (John 14, 15).
This Advocate will be "the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot
receive" (v. 17). As Jesus continues to describe the Spirit it is
evident that the Spirit is not the Father but "proceeds from Him"
(15, 26), that He will be a teacher (14, 26), that He knows all
truth (16, 13) and all of Jesus' words (14, 26).

Jesus' return to the Father is made the condition of the Spirit's
coming (16, 7). Our Lord says: "He will glorify me because all
that He makes known to you He will draw from what is mine"
(16, 14). A dependence of the Spirit on Jesus is clear, but the
gospel nowhere says in so many words that He "proceeds" from
Him. Rather, the relation that is clearest is that the Spirit comes
from the Father as one the Father sends; He is by designation the
"Spirit of God." If the Spirit is sent by the Son (16, 7), it is
"from the Father." His work is to console hearts at the loss of
Jesus and to carry forward the work the Master has begun. He
will come to those who obey Jesus' commands (14, 16).

Two things are in question here, eternal procession, or the
going forth of one divine person from another as from a prin-
ciple of origin, and a mission, or sending of one by another, in
time, to do a saving work. Our knowledge of the eternal proces-
sions in God comes to us in terms of the temporal missions of
Son and Holy Spirit.

Overall, the Spirit's work is consolidation, completion, con-
summation, of that life of God in men that Christ came to share.
The Spirit has meaning not only in relation to the Father and the

11

Son but also to us. We might even say "chiefly to us," not in the
sense that God the Father is. less than man — an unthinkable idea
— but in the sense that unless the Holy Spirit was meant to be a
person in our lives, it would have been quite useless for God to
reveal His existence as distinct from Him and from the Son.
But God does nothing uselessly.

The Witness of Pauline Writings in
Relation to the Gospels

If we recall that the epistles that are certainly St. Paul's were
written between the years 50 and 62, and that those that contain
his doctrine but are done by another hand date to 63-67, we shall
see why his teaching on the three persons in God is an even
earlier reflection of the Church's faith in this mystery than that of
the gospels. We no longer possess the first of the written gospels
(an early version of Matthew, done in Aramaic around the year
50). The first "canonical gospel" is Mark's, composed some time
between 63 and 70. Matthew's gospel in the form in which we
now have it, also Luke's and the Acts of the Apostles, can be
dated to the decade bet\Veen 70 and 80. The gospel according to
John is written after a considerable interval, probably toward the
year 100.

We are quite right in supposing two things about the gospels:
that they are a thoroughly dependable account of the words and
deeds of Jesus, and that they contain the reflections of the Church
on the meaning of His words and deeds up to the time of their
writing. There is very little evidence within the gospels that their
authors meant to refrain from setting down a view of Jesus both
as He was in life and as the Church came to know Him from
Pentecost forward. They contain considerable evidence to the
contrary. That is why an occurrence unique in the four gospels
and indeed in the New Testament — the formula that speaks of
baptizing "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28, 19) — does not surprise us. By the time
this concluding phrase of Matthew's gospel comes to be set
down under the Holy Spirit's inspiration, the Church has bap-
tized many thousands into Christ over several decades.

12

This fact also helps us to understand the trinitarian pattern
of such gospel passages as the annunciation account ("the Holy
Spirit ... the Most High ... the Holy One," Luke 1, 35) ; that of
the baptism of Jesus ("the Spirit, like a dove ... a voice from
heaven . . . 'my Son, my Beloved,'" Mark 1, lOf.), and Jesus'
transfiguration ("a bright cloud ... a voice . . . my Son, my
Beloved," Matt. 17, 5). It is not a question of things having
happened or not happened as the evangelists report them. It is
a question of the inspired writers' telling much later what did
happen in a spirit of Christian and trinitarian faith.

They had to guide them — ^and this is our point — not only the
living tradition of the Church on the saving events but also the
faith of the Church as it had developed in certain directions indi-
cated by Paul's epistles. The latter are soaked in the mystery of
the Three whose life we are called on to share. Paul never ceases
to think of himself as a "Hebrew of Hebrews" (Phil. 3, 5).
This means that his commitment to a belief in the one God is
absolute. The creation of the world "manifests His invisible
attributes clearly" (Rom. 1, 20). After a careful reading of Paul,
one cannot conceive his abiding the charge that he has deserted
the monotheistic faith of his Fathers. For him as for all Israel,
"the Lord is our God, the Lord alone!" (Deut. 6, 4.) There is
none like to Him (Ex. 9, 14) . Paul knows Him now, however, un-
der a new aspect which reveals Him much further. God is, for
him, "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 1, 3f.; Eph.
1, 17; 3, 14), or again someone from whom grace and peace
come as they come from our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Eph. 1, 3;
Phil. 1, 2; 1 and 2 Thess. 1, 1). When Paul wishes to specify
who God is he calls Him the God of Jesus Christ, the Father of
glory (Eph. 3, 17). The revelation of the glory of God "shines
on the face of Christ Jesus" (2 Cor. 4, 6). Jesus is in every way
the intimate of God the Father, who is no less the one God but is
better revealed as such through His only Son. The Father and our
Lord Jesus Christ are together the indivisible God as the sun and
its radiance are the one indivisible light, later writers will say,
basing themselves on texts like Hebrews 1, 3.

Jesus Christ who was "by nature divine" (Phil. 2, 6) "came

13

into the world" (1 Tim. 1, 18) ; "being rich he became poor for
your sakes, that by his poverty you might become rich" (2 Cor.
8, 9). This pre-existent Son came to share the great treasure that
was His, Sonship, in the measure that He could. Those led by the
Spirit are called to be the sons of God and joint heirs with Christ
(cf. Rom. 8, 14; also Gal. 3, 26). God "predestined us to be His
adoptive sons through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure
of His will, to the praise of the glorious manifestation of His
grace" (Eph. 1, 5f.).

The Eternal Plan: "The Mystery of Christ"

This eternal good pleasure of God with respect to us is a ma-
jor theme in Pauline thought. The "mystery of our relation with
God" (1 Tim. 3, 16) is conceived of as having been hidden in
Him eternally; it is now revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.
The mystery, in other words, is Christ Himself (cf. Col. 2, 2).
Jesus, the culmination of the secret plan, is:

manifested in the flesh [i.e., manhood]

rendered holy in the spirit [i.e., by God's action]
seen by angels;
proclaimed to the gentiles,

believed in throughout the world,
taken up in glory.

(1 Tim. 3. 16)

Through the fruition of this plan, God has "rescued us from
the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of
His beloved Son, in whom we have our redemption, the remission
of our sins" (Col. 1, 13f.). Jesus is the firstborn from the dead.
By His perfect obedience He has won headship over the human
race. All the fullness of the Father dwells in Him, and through
Him all things whether on earth or in the heavens are to be recon-
ciled to God. It is through the blood of His cross that Christ
establishes peace (cf. Col. 1, 15-20). The culmination of the mys-
tery in time is this: "Christ in you, your hope of glory" (Col. 1,
27). When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new creation
(2 Cor. 5, 17). From first to last this is God's work (v. 18). It

14

is shared in by Paul "by gifts of the Holy Spirit" (6, 16).

The thing that qualifies Jesus for the role of Reconciler is not
His eternal divine status (which Paul holds unequivocally) but
the divinization of His humanity by the power of the Spirit upon
the fulfillment of His task. From the Father He has received "the
glory," a godlike quality in His manhood which He can now
share in the Spirit with His brothers. Henceforth they are to
come to the glory of the Father through Him. There is no other
way. Meanwhile they are no longer "flesh" (undivinized human-
ity) but temples of God in whom the Spirit of God dwells (cf. 1
Cor. 3, 16f.) . "Do all that you do in the name of the Lord Jesus,"
Paul writes, "giving thanks to God the Father through Him (Col.
3, 17).

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, acquiesced always in His Fa-
ther's will; He is the "Yes" pronounced on God's promises. That
is why when our "Amen" arises to God in glory it does so through
Him (cf. 2 Cor. 1, 18-21). God has set His seal upon us and "has
given us the Spirit as a pledge in our hearts" (v. 22) . To this seal
or impress in the image of Christ we must be faithful if the eter-
nal plan is to see its final realization in us. Then our earthly
bodies will be exchanged for heavenly bodies; the glory that is in
Christ will be in us. God will be all— in all (cf. 1 Cor. 15, 20-44) .

It is clear from the above that Paul never conceived "the mys-
tery of God" simply as the hidden or mysterious character of the
godhead. No, the phrase concerns God as He makes a revelation
of His eternal secret by performing a deed of love on our behalf.
In His plan the incarnation of the Son, which ends in His glori-
fication, is central. Again, the glory that is in Christ will be a
reality in us only through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Paul
speaks of the divine Three effortlessly, naturally, and always in a
context of man's salvation. A typical conclusion to one of his
epistles reads:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you (2 Cor. 13, 13).

He is prone to make His mention of gifts to the Church or
functions within her in terms of the divine Three:

15

There are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit; and there
are varieties of ministries but the same Lord; and there are
varieties of roles but the same God, who works all things in all.

(1 Cor. 12, 4-6)

Frequently Paul will concentrate exclusively on the Father-Son
relationship and what it means to us, but the totality of divinity
active to save us is never less than trinitarian:

Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into
our hearts, crying "Abba, Father" (Gal. 4, 6).

Do not be drunk with wine . . . but be filled with the Spirit . . .
giving thanks always ... in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
to God the Father (Eph. 5, 18-20).

Having been justified by faith, let us have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access by
faith to that grace in which we now stand . . . For the charity
of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has
been given to us (Rom. 5, 1-5).

For all the New Testament writers, God is love (cf. 1 John 4,
16). This does not merely mean, as we have said, that in His
dealings with men God is loving but that His inner life is love.
He is love in Himself, a union of giving among three persons.
The manifestation of love He makes in our behalf is a communi-
cation of the love that He Himself is. The high point of His self-
revelation is at the same time the final act of man^s salvation.
What had been until then a veiled secret is revealed: the inner
life of Father, Son, and Spirit. It is done in the person of Jesus
Christ.

Karl Rahner, the contemporary German theologian, calls the
Incarnation "the definitive reality." It is "the indissoluble, irrevo-
cable presence of God in the world as salvation, love and forgive-
ness, as communication to the world of the most intimate depths
of the divine Reality itself and of its Trinitarian life: Christ"
("The Development of Dogma," Theological Investigations, I,
49). There can be no further revelation of God after Christ —
•only searching and explanation of its meaning — because every-
thing has been said, everything given "in the So« of Love, in

16

whom God and the world have become one . . {Ibid,), We
learn the interior trinitarian relations in God only through being
told how the loving Father means to make sons of us in the only
Son by the power of the Spirit,

Early Christian Teaching

As we might expect, those who are honored as our Fathers in
the faith teach the mystery of God in the same terms as the New
Testament writers. The Father-Son relationship dominates; the
Spirit is ever-present as the gift or outpouring of Two who love.
Men of the first century like St. Clement of Rome and the anony-
mous author of The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles call Jesus
'^God's Ambassador" and the "Servant" of the Holy Father and
Lord Almighty. Both are biblically-rooted titles. Clement adds
"the Scepter of the Divine Majesty." Neither puts any limitation
on His status as a divine being.

The author of The Didache {The Teaching) instructs in how
to baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit." There is a marvelous stress in Clement on the high
priestly office of Christ and the efficacy of His blood. He speaks
of the Holy Spirit as behind the exhortation to conversion in the
Old Testament; it is through Him that Christ "calls us to Him-
self"— at which point in Clement's Chapter 22, Psalms 33 [34]
and 31 [32] are quoted. God is "the Master" Who has raised up
Jesus Christ as the firstfruits of the dead. We "look straight at
the heavens above" through Jesus Christ, the High Priest.

Through Him we see mirrored God's faultless and transcendent
countenance. Through Him the eyes of our heart were opened.
Through Him our unintelligent and darkened mind shoots up
into the light {Epistle to the Corinthians, 36).

The sacred writings "tell the truth and proceed from the Holy
Spirit." The Spirit also equipped the apostles with a "fullness"
to preach the good news of the Kingdom, and test men as fit sub-
jects for the office of bishop and deacon.

The special contribution of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the mar-

17

tyr of the early second century, is that he models his high con-
ception of the bishop's office on the relation of Christ to the Fa-
ther. As God is to the Son, so is the Son to the bishop; again,
the bishop is a type of the Father, the deacon of Jesus Christ,
and the presbyters of God's high council. Despite this hierarch-
ical order, Ignatius yields to none in his Pauline-like adoration
of Christ.

The first of St. Justin's two Apologies against the pagans,
written around the year 150, mentions that the candidates for
baptism ''receive the washing with water in the name of God the
Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Savior Jesus Christ,
and of the Holy Spirit" (61). A letter that confidently calls itself
the Epistle of the Apostles from about the same period, written
in Egypt or Asia Minor, says:

In God the Lord the Son of God do we believe, that He is the
Word become flesh: that of Mary the Virgin He took a body, be-
gotten of the Holy Ghost, not of the will of the flesh, but by the
will of God (3).

Elsewhere, Jesus is made to say explicitly : "I who am unbegotten
and yet begotten of mankind, who am flesh and yet have borne
flesh . . ." (21).

The roots of later creeds are discernible in the formulas of
Christian faith proposed by St. Irenaeus of Antioch (ca. 180)
and St. Hippolytus of Rome (ca. 215). Irenaeus wrote in a book
called Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching that faith bids
us bear in mind first of all,

that we have received baptism for the remission of sins in the
name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ the Son
of God, Who was incarnate and died and rose again, and in the
Holy Spirit of God (3).

He also explains that, "the baptism of our regeneration proceeds
through three points, God the Father bestowing upon us regenera^
tion through His Son by the Holy Spirit^'' (7). In the preceding
chapter he has expounded the "three points" in what amounts to
a trinitarian creed. Hippolytus does something very similar by

18

providing in his Apostolic Tradition a Roman creed that is the
Apostles' Creed as we know it but for six phrases. Theophilus of
Antioch, meanwhile (ca. 180), has begun to use the Greek term
trids — meaning three of anything — to describe Father, Son, and
Spirit. Tertullian, the North African theologian, will shortly do
the same by introducing the Latin word trinitas.

The Beginnings of TWnitarian Theology

By the year 200 there had developed an uninterrupted and
largely unquestioned belief in Three who are divine by nature.
The commonest description of them that emerges, besides the
"Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" of the baptismal creeds, is "God,
Word, and Wisdom." The latter term enjoyed initial usage as a
designation of the Son, but it came to dislodge the earlier
"Pledge" or "Gift" as the usual way of referring to the Spirit. The
Church's faith, we have said, remained a largely unexamined one
until the first properly theological activity in the West which was
carried on by Tertullian (who died sometime after 220), and
that of Origen in the East (d. ca. 253-4).

Both tended to stress the distinctness of the Three. In Origen's
case there are unfortunate overtones of a "subordinationism"
of Son to Father. This had its origins in neo-Platonic philosophy,
the chief figure in which was the Alexandrian Plotinus (d. ca. 270
A.D.). In general, this view stressed a Supreme Good as the
source of all, which accomplished the ordering of the universe
through his logos, i.e., his reason or plan. Plato's universe, it will
be remembered, had been fashioned by a Demiurge (Craftsman).
In the Plotinian scheme this logos was seen as the world-soul.
The Jewish contemporary of Jesus, Philo of Alexandria, had
adopted Plato's idea by teaching that the logos immanent in God's
mind was expressed by acts outside the deity.

Translated into Christian terms, the "Word" of the fourth
gospel was viewed by the earliest theologians as the eternally rea-
sonable principle in God. He was given expression by an act of
will, said Theophilus of Antioch. A confused Tatian put forth
the idea that at the creation the logos immanent in God sprang
forth from Him as His first work. These notions of the second-

19

century apologists (like Justin's description of Christ as a "second
God" worshiped "in a secondary rank," / Apology, 13, 3, and
Athenagoras' idea of Him as an "outpouring" of God, Apology,
7, 2) led to Origen's declarations that the Son is the Father's
"minister," that in the work of creating He does an errand for the
Father, that the Father is higher above the Son and the Holy
Spirit than they are above the world of creatures. This teaching
is based on the Plotinian notion that a near-abyss had to come
after the One. The Father is that One and He first utters a Word.
Through this Word He produces all things, but first of all the
Holy Spirit, the noblest to be so produced {On John, 1, 10, 73).

This type of thinking came in the wake of two other notions
which held considerable sway. One was the idea of the unity of
the godhead in the work of originating things {monarcMa) . The
other concerned an "economic trinity," i.e., the idea of the pro-
duction * of the Son by the Father with a view to creating the
world through Him, and of the Spirit precisely for the work of
inspiring the prophets.

The first idea, that of the divine "monarchy," had this impor-
tance; it so guarded the unity of the godhead that any hint of
plurality in God seemed to it the threat of polytheism. Since God
alone was uncreated (or "unoriginated") , a Son "begotten" by
Him meant to the monarchians that this Son could not possibly be
unoriginated, hence could not be God. More basically still, any
clear distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
such as that made by Tertullian and Origen was suspect of
"tritheism" to the monarchian mentality — the error of belief in
three Gods. Their over-all response to the challenge of a distinct
tion was to teach "modalism" of various sorts. God's being was
one, they said; it took on different modes or forms, namely, of
the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the work of redemption.

The modalists were of various types, for example, Paul of
Samosata who taught that the man Jesus was not God's Word but
was adopted by God and so became Christ ("dynamic modal-

^ Observe thai "production" does not connote "creation" in trin-
itarian Theology, though it may for those with a heretical intention.
For trinilarian Christians it means the eternal activity in the Father
by which Son and S[)irit come forth from Him.

20

ism") ; Noetus of Smyrna and Epigonus who held that it was the
Father who suffered in the form of Christ on the cross ("patri-
passianism") ; and the best remembered of the modalist thinkers
Sabellius, for whom there were three operations or successive
projections of God. There was a single divine essence from which
two modes of expression flowed. Just as the sun yields light and
warmth by radiation, so the Father projects Himself first as Son
and then as Spirit. Both are withdrawn back into the "parent
body" once their respective works as redeemer and bestower of
grace are done.

It was in this climate that bitter battles were fought over
various emerging terms in Greek and Latin. The chief of these
can be rendered in English "person," "nature," "essence" (or
"being'*'), and "substance." A difficulty was that many of these
thinkers were simply trying to find a way to say "distinct indi-
viduals in the godhead" — what we now call divine persons — and
were accused for their pains of multiplying divine beings, while
others tried to protect the essential oneness of God and were
charged with not holding that His Word and His Wisdom were
distinct from Him as Father. The entire third century was taken
up with the struggle to express the truth of Catholic faith en-
shrined in the later formula that there are "three persons in one
divine nature^' The two terms in italics are not to be found in
Scripture, a major count against them in many third century
minds. Besides, certain terms enjoyed diametrically opposed
meanings at various times, e.g., hypostasis and ousia which
traded places as signifying "substance" and "person" over a
fifty year span (first they signified what we mean by the two
English words in that order, then in the reverse order).

The Arian Crisis

The whole matter was brought to a head by the heretical de-
nial of Catholic faith by a certain priest of Alexandria named
Arius, a disciple of Lucian of Samosata. Arius was a subtle and
argumentative person. His basic position in the work he pub-
lished in 318, Thalia ("Symposium"), was that the Son was a
creature of God made by Him before the foundation of the world.

21

"There was a when-he-was-not" was his clever formula, which by
omitting the word "time" put the production of the Word before
the beginning of the world (and time), but specified him as a
creature none the less.

Despite his thoroughly Catholic vocabulary (Arius did not
scruple at calling Christ "God" as a conventional mode of speech) ,
the discovery of the Council of Nicaea in 325 was against him
and he was excommunicated. He seemed to be on the brink of
signing the Council's formula in 336 when he died. The emperor
Constantine, who it appears had summoned the meeting to achieve
political peace rather than out of any religious conviction, died
a year later, becoming a Christian on his deathbed. The Catholic
faith enunciated by the two hundred-odd bishops at Nicaea, only a
handful of them from the West, seems to have been formulated
by Bishop Ossius of Cordoba in Spain. He was the emperor's
theologian and also the representative of the bishop of Rome.
The latter fact made it possible for this assembly to be recognized
as the first of the ecumenical councils, for its acts were later sub-
mitted to the Pope for his approval. The creed drafted at Nicaea
spoke of Christ as being homoousion (in the accusative case)
with the Father, a word that had had modalist significance only
a generation before. It seems to have meant "consubstantial" to
Ossius who proposed it, i.e, of one substance, essence, or nature
with the Father, whereas to the Greek signers it almost certainly
meant "alike in being with the likeness of two who are God."
The two understandings of the formula had the same effect, name-
ly, to declare the full divinity of the eternal Word.

In the half-century that followed, men of Catholic sympathies
who were opposed to the wording of Nicaea for the Sabellian
sound of its key word put forward the alternative term "homoi-
ousios." History has unfairly branded these Homoeousians
"semi-Arians," whereas the truth that emerged after thirty or
forty years was that their resistance was largely verbal; they were
denying a proposition that Nicaea had not affirmed, namely, that
the Father and the Son were the same person. The true Arians
of this period came; to be known as Homoeans: in other words,
the Word was "like" the Father to them but with the likeness of

22

mere analogy (i.e. of a creature who is analogous to God), not
the likeness that characterizes distinct divine persons who have
identity of substance.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria and St. Hilary of Poitiers were
the two who brought East and West together in a common pro-
fession of trinitarian faith. Residence by each in the territory
of the other through exile was the factor that made it clear to
them how the opposite party felt: the Westerners clinging to the
primary importance of the unity of the divine nature, the East-
erners stressing the distinction of the co-equal persons.

The Divinity of the Holy Spirit

It would be a matter of great surprise if the Holy Spirit's
status as a divine person were not challenged in this period, if
only as a logical consequence of the Arian denial. He was in fact
reduced to the status of a divine force or instrumentality by a
party in the mid-fourth century known as the "Spirit-fighters."
The Church's response to this heresy was to affirm the divinity
of the Holy Spirit at the Council of Constantinople in 381. An
unfortunate bishop of Constantinople named Macedonius, who
had died twenty years before, gave his name to the error ("Mace-
donianism"). Actually he was a Homoeousian who had been de-
posed from office on Arian charges. The doubtful honor of calling
the Holy Spirit "neither God nor a creature like other creatures"
belongs to the Macedonian heretic Eustathius of Sebaste.

Augustine and Aquinas Against the
Fourth Century Backgrouncl

It is not within the scope of this pamphlet to record at length
the synthesis of trinitarian theology that was achieved in the early
fifth century by St. Augustine of Hippo, building on the insights
of St. Basil, the two Gregorys, and Didymus the Blind. He is,
however, our chief source for a developed science of faith in this
mystery. His original contribution was to specify that the Three
are real or subsistent relations, "as real and eternal as the factors
of begetting, being begotten, and proceeding (or being bestowed)
within the Godhead which gave rise to them. Father, Son and

23

Spirit are thus relations in the sense that whatever each of Them
is, He is in relation to one or both of the others" (J. N. D. Kelly,
Early Christian Doctrines, p. 275).

St. Thomas Aquinas will take the idea of Augustine further
by situating the eternal production of the Son and the Holy
Spirit in the single divine act which has two effects, one in the
order of intellect and the other of will. Aquinas depends largely
on the biblical terminology of the "word" and "wisdom" of God
as applied to the Son, to maintain that He is begotten by intellec-
tual generation. For the Spirit, he has the terms "pledge,*'
"gift," "flame," and "breath" to aid him in describing Him as
the subsistent Love of Father and Son who binds the Two to-
gether.

To understand the possibility of the theological edifices
erected by the chief thinkers of Western Christendom, we must
know the stones available to them on the building site. A major
theological victory had been achieved around the year 250 when
a Roman writer named Novatian set free the idea of the genera-
tion of the Son by the Father from the idea of the creation of the
world. This may seem strange to us, accustomed as we are to
thinking of God as He is in Himself, unconfused with His world.
Christians of the first three centuries who were uninfected by the
Gnostic error (which taught a whole pantheon of "emanations"
from the divine substance, known jointly as the plerdma) did not
confuse God with the world, but they certainly conceived Him
almost solely in terms of the salvation of that world. Novatian
wrote that the Son receives His being from the Father "in a com-
munity of substance." As a "second person after the Father," He
forever harks back to Him. Tertullian taught that the "perfect
generation" of the Word dated only from His going forth from
the Father to serve as the image of creatures. Origen, on the
other hand, said clearly that the Word was generated eternally,
and that He is one of three hypostaseis (subsistent individuals)
who are divine.

The precisions of Novatian and Origen were invaluable, since
a theology of the inner life of God could not be achieved until the
pre-temporal existence of the Son was seen to be in no way con-

24

tingent on the creation accomplished by God through His Word.
The revelation of the Son and the Spirit as other than the Father
had come to man in a context of the redemptive plan. This fact
proved both a help and a hindrance in the early Church's attempts
to conceive the reality of the trinity of persons. It assured the
divine Three a dynamic character in the thought and prayer life
of Christians, but it deferred a theological probing into the eter-
nal relations of the Three. Subsequent theological inquiry — trig-
gered by the Arian threat — enabled Christians to say that the
Father eternally begets the Son, from whom in turn proceeds
eternally the Holy Spirit. He comes from the Father and the Son
(the phrasing here is that of the credal phrase of fifth-century
Spanish origin, Filioque; "from the Father through the Son," is
the older formula, to which Eastern Christians still adhere).

These eternal relations in fact constitute the persons. No work
of creation or redemption was needed for the Father to beget His
Son, no prophecy nor sanctification of men was required for both
to breathe forth the Spirit. Yet in setting the trinitarian relations
apart from that work of God in time through which we know
them, something was lost. The Church of today needs to hold fast
to its developed theology of processions and relations, to its con-
templation of God as He is in Himself, while at the same time re-
capturing an earlier spirit which the New Testament and the
primitive Roman liturgy (this would exclude the preface of the
Holy Trinity) stress, namely, the divine deed of redemption as
the best clue to the inner, personal dynamic behind it.

Something similar is true of the Catholic response to the Arian
denial. Faith in the full divinity of the Son was expressed so em-
phatically at Nicaea (325) that His status as the God-mem was
clouded somewhat. He became in popular piety (and even in lit-
urgy) less "the firstborn of many brothers," our High Priest eter-
nally interceding for us, and more the ultimate object of our ado-
ration. The Byzantine stress on Christ as Pantokrdtor — Creator
of All — suppresses His radical function as Mediator with the
Father. He becomes the center of worship in Catholic prayer,
no longer the Way to the Father but terminal in man's relation
to God. The Father recedes, the Spirit becomes a shadowy figure.

25

Jesus Christ is all. His Mother is brought to the fore because
the Son's niche as chief intercessor in heaven is vacated. The
language of St. Paul describing the "mystery of Christ" grows
unfamiliar to Catholics. The ancient collects of the Roman Mis-
sal, even the canon, are unrelated to their prayer lives.

For all these reasons, centuries old, one is inclined to say that
the liturgical and biblical renewals of the last fifty years have
encountered resistance, not so much because a return to the Scrip-
tures was erroneously thought of as a cleaving to the Protestant
principle nor that liturgical participation was felt a novelty and
an embarrassment, but because the ancient Catholic faith re-
flected in those two sources cannot be identified at all points with
the basically non-trinitarian piety of fifteen hundred years.

This extended period is a very important chapter in the his-
tory of Catholic theology and piety. The "anti-Arian reaction,"
as its first years are known, may not be viewed as essentially de-
formative of Catholic faith; neither should it be made the whip-
ping-boy for the various ills of medieval Christendom. Nonethe-
less, its influence cannot be minimized, as J. A. Jungmann has
shown in the carefully documented studies which form the open-
ing chapters of Pastoral Liturgy (New York: Herder & Herder,
1962), pp. 1-89.

Not even the careful structures of the Augustinian and Thom-
istic syntheses, perfectly sound theologically, could dislodge the
emphasis reflected in phrases such as "Jesus our God" or "God
has reigned from the tree" that flourished contemporaneously.
The Catholic declaration at Nicaea and Constantinople against
any subordination of the Word or the Spirit was made, in other
words, at the price of a de-emphasis of the instrumental and inter-
mediary role of Jesus Christ. His divinity is affirmed at the cost
of unconscious derogation of His divinized humanity. The risen
body of the Savior, which for the Scriptures is that glory through
which we are saved, gives place to the divine Christ who on His
cross does a work on our behalf. We need only believe in the
efficacy of His deed (not the Father's deed, not a deed brought to
completion by the Spirit) and we shall live. Such was the mis-
reading of faith which was never substituted for Catholic faith

26

but which was the low and narrow door to faith for thousands.

That, however, is a catalogue of loss. The catalogue of gain
would include St. Augustine's stress on the psychological unity
that brings Christ and the Christian together in a single organism.
The Father has but a single Son, and He is we, and we are He.
"We are called God's sons, but He is God's Son in a different
sense. . . ." He is the only Son, we are many. He is one, we are
one in Him. He is born, we are adopted. He is the Son by nature,
begotten from eternity; we are made sons by grace in time" {On
Psalm 88, 7).

St. Thomas makes the same point in commenting on Galatians
3, 26: "Faith alone makes us adoptive sons of God. No one is an
adopted son unless he is united to the natural Son of God and
cleaves to Him. For faith makes us sons in Jesus Christ" {On
Galatians, 3, 9). Aquinas is teaching concurrently that the one
divine essence, nature, or substance {i.e., the godhead viewed
philosophically under three different aspects) is identical with a
single divine act that is twofold in its effect. Human limitation
forces us to see this simple activity in God as thought and will,
though the two are in fact one and distinguishable from His es--
sence only logically, i.e., by a process of human thought. God
contemplates His essence eternally and the result is necessarily
fruitful (not creative). The Father begets a Son who is His per-
fect image. These two are bound together in love, and the eternal
bond is a relation that is person, the Spirit Who is love.

The divine nature is not shared by Three. This would connote
parts of a whole. The godhead is fully realized in each of Three.
All that is God is Father except to be Son and Spirit, for example;
and so with each of the other Two. The Son is everything the
Father and Spirit are except that He alone proceeds by generation
and, together with Him Who begets Him, breathes forth Another.
They, on the other hand, are persons Who either beget and
breathe forth while unbegotten (the Father), or come forth as the
breath of Two (the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father
through the Son). There is no distinction among the Three, the
medieval Schoolmen held, except the "relation of mutual opposi-
tion." This relation is in the realm of substance, it is not "acci-

27

dental" (as all relations among creatures are, e.g. between two
human beings who remain two distinct substances). The rela-
tion is "hypostatized," i.e., it terminates in persons. The persons
forever contemplate each other in love.

Because an individual human nature has entered into a unique
relation with one of them — i.e. the body and soul of Jesus with
the Word or Son as a result of the indivisible activity of Three^ —
all mankind similarly composed of body and soul is potentially
in a new relation to God, for the man Jesus is alone the God-man
Jesus Christ now reigning in glory. Hence all humanity is in a
potential relation to Father and Holy Spirit as well as to the Son,
because Father and Spirit are inseparable in nature from Him
Who is the Son. Christ is man's Bridge to God. Man is invited
to have a part in the community, the fellowship, of the Three
eternally. His call is from God. He is invited to go to God,
through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

Current Trinitarian Theology

The theology of the mystery of the trinity in unity lay dor-
mant until a series of nineteenth century researches began into
the nature of the "divine indwelling." Exactly how does God
abide in man through grace? was the question. The modern
questioners were M. J. Scheeben, T. de Regnon, P. Galtier, E.
Mersch, and contemporarily P. de Letter, B. Froget, and M. Don-
nelly, among others. All took their lead from D. Petavius, a
17th century theologian who posited a special relation of the
Christian with the Holy Spirit, not that of appropriation only.
The ancient proposition in possession was that since all actions of
God outside Himself {ad extra) are proper to the divine will,
which is one with the divine essence, the soul of the Christian is
in relation to God (Who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), but not
in a distinct relationship to each of the Three. The latter would re-
quire three distinct operations in God, the scholastic tradition
holds, which is unthinkable. The only proper union of a creature
with an individual divine person is a substantial one, namely, that
of the human nature of Jesus to the eternal Word, according to
the scholastics.

28

Opposite views are chiefly those of Mersch (who taught that
man's special union with Christ makes him a partaker in the role
of co-Spirator of the Holy Spirit, Whom the Word now united to
Christ's humanity breathes forth) ; that his special union is with
the Holy Spirit in a union similar to that which exists between
the Word and His humanity, not of course the same type of union
(Petavius) ; with all three persons, the Father as begetting and
breathing and then sending His Son and Spirit into the human
soul, and the Son and Spirit as proceeding and then sent into the
Christian.

The difficulty against such positions is that God's activity out-
side Himself was traditionally thought of as necessarily one act.
Only within Himself is there a relation of threeness. This means
that the man in grace is said to have the Holy Spirit dwelling
in Him in the sense that the conclusion or end-term of God's
inner act, the Holy Spirit, stands for the totality of the divine be-
ing. The work of sanctifying men is "appropriated" to the Holy
Spirit; where He is, the Father and Son necessarily are, since
there is but one divine nature and activity.

Yet the researches of Petavius and especially Scheeben into
the writings of the Fathers show that they speak consistently as
if there is a proper and distinct relation of the Christian to each
of the persons. The three persons possess the divine nature fully
and yet each in a special way. What is to stop these same persons
from possessing a created nature, each in a special way? Schee-
ben's major distinction is between the divine activity, which is one
with respect to man, and its effect, which is threefold.

Conclusion

There is every indication that modern theological speculation
is going to restore to the Church the concept, more fully devel-
oped than ever, of a distinct relation of the Christian to Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. Something of the mutual relations of knowl-
edge and love within the godhead is surely reflected in the mis-
sions of the Word and Wisdom by God to Christian man. In any
case, it becomes more obvious through preaching, catechizing
and theological teaching that the mystery of God's inner life, re-

29

vealed out of love, is not "a truth which we cannot fully under-
stand" so much as it is a life to which we are called to live
eternally.

The Christian life is essentially a trinitarian life. In the
ritual of baptism, that sacrament of faith which initiates a man
into new relationships to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the very
words designate the nature of this new life. The Christian is
privileged to know God as He is in Himself, in His triune per-
sonality, because th^ Word was made flesh. Christ is primarily
the revealer of the Father — His Father who is also our Father.
The Father has predestined us from eternity to sonship in His
only Son, a vocation given in virtue of the redemptive act (pas-
sion, resurrection and ascension) through which He wished all
men to be reconciled to Himself. It is through the power of the
Holy Spirit — the Spirit of Christ sent by Christ and the Father,
that a man is adopted as son, configured and incorporated into
Christ. His life will be a journey to the Father, through the Son,
in the Holy Spirit.

Through the created reality of grace — a gift which is neces-
sarily accompanied by its Giver, since God is where He acts — the
Christian attains union with the Uncreated Trinity. Made a
sharer of the divine nature, he now partakes of God's life through
faith and charity. The Father has first donated to the Son all
that He is, retaining as personal characteristic only His relation
of Fatherhood. The Son regards the Father with perfect love,
and this mutual love is personal: the Spirit who proceeds from
both Father and Son as from one principle, by mode of love. He
is the Bond of the mutual knowledge and self-giving of Father
and Son.

All is a communion of love. The Christian, taken up into this
life, most truly exercises his new nature as Christian by exercising
a love that is proper to the divine Three.

30

STUDY-CLUB QUESTIONS

1. How is each of the Persons of the Trinity revealed to us through
what He does to save us?

2. How does Christ differentiate between His earthly father and the
God who begot Him?

3. Give other examples of Christ's references to His unique relation
to God the Father.

4. How do men share in this relationship of Christ to God?

5. Explain when and how Christ makes explicit the relationship of
the Holy Spirit both to Himself and to the Father.

6. What is the work of the Holy Spirit with respect to man's salva-
tion?

7. Are there evidences of trinitarian faith in St. Paul's epistles ? If
so, explain them.

8. How does the Holy Spirit lead men to a share in the glory of God?

9. Through what is the salvation of man attained? How?

10. Why can there be "no further revelation of God after Christ"?

11. In what way does St. Clement of Rome add to our knowledge of
Christ and the Holy Spirit?

12. Give some examples of how other early Christian Fathers devel-
oped the Church's faith in the Trinity.

13. Explain the ideas of the modalists.

14. Who was Arius and why is he important?

15. What are the ramifications of the Byzantine stress on Christ as
"Creator of All" on the manner of regarding the Trinity?

16. Why has there been a resistance within the Church to liturgical
and biblical renewals during modern times?

17. How did the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople affect the
Catholic doctrine concerning Christ?

18. St. Augustine stressed the psychological unity of Christ with man.
Explain this.

19. With relation to the Trinity, explain the statement "the godhead
is fully realized in each of three."

20. The relation of the Christian to the Trinity was explored by the
scholastics. In the modern period, beginning with Petavius,
theologians have attempted to explain this relation in other
terms. What are the basic differences in the two approaches to
the question?

31

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Danielou, Jean. God and the Ways of Knowing. Chapter 4, "The God
of Jesus Christ." New York: Meridian Books, 1960. Pp. 139-73.

Jungmann, Josef Andreas. Pastoral Liturgy. New York: Herder and

Herder, 1962. Pp. 1-89.
. The Good News Yesterday and Today. New York: W. H.

Sadlier, Inc., 1962. Pp. 47-69.

Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. Chapters IV, V, IX, X.
Second edition; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1960. Pp.
83-137; 223-79.

Mersch, Emile. The Theology of the Mystical Body. Book Four, "The
Blessed Trinity." St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1952. Pp. 325-
452.

Norris, Frank B. "Sacred Scripture and Trinitarian Devotion," Bible,
Life, and W or ship. Washington, D.C. : The Liturgical Conference,
1961. Pp. 108-10.

Rahner, Karl. Theological Investigations, /. "Theos in the New Testa-
ment." Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961. Pp. 79-148.

Scheeben, Matthias. The Mysteries of Christianity. "The Mystery of
the Most Holy Trinity." St. Louis: B. Herder, 1946. Pp. 25-197.

Shea, William M. and Wrenn, Michael J. "The Relationship of the
Christian to the Trinity," The Dunwoodie Review, 1 (January,
1961), 38-68; (April, 1961), 111-36.

Sloyan, Gerard S. The Three Persons in One God. "Foundations of
Catholic Theology Series." Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1964,

Vagaggini, Cyprian. Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, I. Chapter
7, "The Liturgy and the Christological and Trinitarian Dialectic
of Salvation." Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1960. Pp.
107-39.

32

PAULIST

DOCTRINAL I
PAMPHLET

THE HISTORY OF SALVATION

Leonard Johnston

WHAT IS GOD LIKE?

J. Edgar Bruns

GOD IS FAITHFUL

Mother Kathryn Sullivan, R.5.C.J.

THE HOPE OF ISRAEL

Frederick L. Moriarty, S.J.

THE TRINITY

Gerard S. Sloyan

THE PERSON OF CHRIST

Wilfrid F. Dewan, C.5.P.

PASSION, DEATH AND
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

Myles M. Bourlte

THE CHURCH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Thomas L. Sheridan, S.J.

THE SACRAMENTS-Signs of Christ,
Sanctlfier and High Priest

Edward J. Kilmartin, S.J.

BAPTISM

Ignatius Hunt, O.S.B.

PENANCE

Thomas M. Finn, C.S.P.

THE EUCHARIST

Neal M. Flanagan, O.S.M.

UFE AFTER DEATH

Matthew J. O'Connell, S.J.

THEOLOGY OF THE WORD
George H. Tavard, A.A.

THE PARABLES OF THE GOSPELS

Raymond E. Brown, S.S.

JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Victor J. Donovan, CP.

GOD'S WORD AND MAN'S RESPONSE

Bernard Haring, C.SS.R.

P
1

CONFIRMATION: GIFT OF THE S

Mother Marian Boh"" '

EXTREME UNCTION

Joseph E. Krause
HOLY ORDERS

Paul F. Palmer, S.J.

CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE

J. Richard Quinn

LIFE IN CHRIST

Barnabas Mary Ahem, CP
THE MOTHER OF CHRIST

Eamon R. Carroll, O. Carm.

MORALITY AND THE LOVE OF Pon
Charles Curran

THE MASS AND THE LAITY

Frederick R. McManus

WHAT IS THE LITURGY?

Joseph V. Gallagher, '
WHAT IS FAITH?

Joseph Cahill, S.J.
PRAYER

James C. Turro

DEATH FOR A CHRISTIAN

Stanley B. Marrow, S.J.

THE CHRISTIAN IN THE MODERN WORLD!
Robert G. Noyf

EASTERN-RITE CATHOLICISM
Robert F. Taft, S.J.

THE BIBLE AND THE LITURGY
Ignatius Hunt, O.S.B.

THE MEANING OF SANCTIFYING GRACE
Robert W. G/eason, S.J.

THE HISTORICAL SEHING OF THE OLP '
TESTAMENT

Robert H. Punke

WORD AND SACRAMENT IN THE CHURC

Gregory 8aum, O.S.A.

PAULIST PRESS

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